Oakland Unified School District

Navjeet Banga

Educator.  Historian.  Advocate.

SDC English & Study Skills Teacher and IEP Case Manager at Skyline High School. ABD doctoral candidate in History. I teach students how to think, write about how institutions shape human outcomes, and fight every day for the students the system too often overlooks.

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The Long Way Around
Is Still the Way

I came to teaching the way most interesting people come to their calling — not in a straight line. My path wound through graduate seminars, archival research, and a deep conviction that the structures we build matter more than the talent we put inside them. That conviction now lives in every IEP I write and every lesson I teach.

As a Specialized Academic Instruction (SDC) teacher of English and Study Skills at Skyline High School, I work with students who require individualized support to access grade-level content and build the academic habits that carry them beyond high school. As IEP Case Manager, I coordinate the legal, academic, and human dimensions of each student's plan — translating federal law into real outcomes for real people.

My background as an ABD doctoral candidate in History gives me something most educators don't have: a framework for understanding how institutions work, how power moves through systems, and how the rules of the game shape what's possible for the people playing it. I bring that lens into the classroom every day.

I write on Medium because the patterns I study in archives show up everywhere — in classrooms, in courtrooms, in the quiet bureaucratic decisions that determine whose potential gets recognized and whose gets filed away.

Essays & Analysis

The IEP as Institutional Document: What Disability Law Reveals About Power

How the structures built around IDEA shape what teachers, students, and families can actually achieve — and who decides.

Coming Soon

Why Oakland: The Geography of Institutional Neglect and Resilience

A decade working in Oakland Unified taught me that geography shapes institutional outcomes in ways that talent alone cannot overcome.

Coming Soon

What the Archive Teaches You About the Classroom

The skills that make a historian — close reading, source criticism, comfort with ambiguity — are exactly what struggling students need most.

Coming Soon

Professional Practice

SDC English & Study Skills Instruction

Teaching Specialized Academic Instruction in English Language Arts and Study Skills at Skyline High School. Designing differentiated curriculum that meets students where they are and builds the academic skills — organization, writing, critical reading — that transfer across every subject and into life beyond school.

ELA Instruction Study Skills Differentiated Learning

IEP Case Management & Compliance

Managing a full caseload of students with disabilities — developing legally compliant IEPs, coordinating with general education teachers, related service providers, and families. Recognized by central office for top-five district rankings in Lexia literacy program engagement.

IEP Development IDEA Compliance Family Communication

Transition Planning & Student Advocacy

Building individualized transition plans connecting students to college, vocational training, and employment pathways. Navigating complex interagency coordination between OUSD, community colleges, and regional center services to open doors that too often stay closed.

Transition Planning Post-Secondary Access Student Advocacy

Historical Scholarship & Public Writing

ABD doctoral candidate in History with an MA and BA in Sociology. Published essayist on Medium exploring institutional design, systems thinking, and the patterns that connect the Royal Society of 1660 to the school systems of today. The archive and the classroom are the same project.

ABD History Public Writing Institutional Analysis

Let's Correspond

I'm interested in conversations about education systems, institutional design, history, and the structures that shape what students — and institutions — can become. Whether you're an administrator, researcher, fellow educator, or curious reader, I'd like to hear from you.

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